Director Shalini Kantayya exposes dangers of artificial intelligence in ‘Coded Bias’
“Coded Bias” closely follows Silkie Carlo, a senior advocacy officer at Liberty and co-author of “Information Security for Journalists,” who says that these technologies are more likely to misidentify an innocent citizen than to correctly identify the criminal. In fact, Carlo says “98 percent of those matches are in fact incorrectly matching an innocent person as a wanted person.”
“Coded Bias” captured such an event in the United Kingdom, displaying members of an out-of-uniform police force halting, searching, and fingerprinting a Black 14-year-old boy for possessing a “facial match” with a criminal. His friends from school stood by watching, helpless against the police and their inaccurate facial recognition technology.
For this reason, Carlo became the director of Big Brother Watch, a British nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting citizen privacy against state surveillance. The viewer observes Carlo campaigning for Big Brother Watch by approaching members of the U.K. Parliament on a London street corner, eager to explain how facial recognition poses an infringement upon one’s privacy.
Buolamwini scrolled through the data set of the facial recognition software, noting that since each face was white, “systems weren’t familiar with faces like mine.” Buolamwini herself described this, presenting a slide to the MIT Media Lab reading “data is destiny” and highlighting how skewed data leads to skewed artificial intelligence systems.
See the full story here: https://www.columbiaspectator.com/arts-and-entertainment/2021/03/06/director-shalini-kantayya-exposes-dangers-of-artificial-intelligence-in-coded-bias/
Sony Pictures Unveils Virtual Reality Game Set in ‘Zombieland’ Universe
Sony Pictures Virtual Reality and British development studio XR Games unveiled on Thursday a VR shooter game set in the Zombieland universe.
Zombieland: Headshot Fever tasks players with joining Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg in Ruben Fleischer's 2009 film; Tallahassee, Wichita and Little Rock as they take on the undead amid a zombie-killing racecourse. The game is inspired by 1990s' arcade-style light-gun shooting and modern racing titles, and will, as the companies describe, retain the humor and action of Zombieland and its sequel, Double Tap.
See the full story here: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/sony-pictures-unveils-virtual-reality-game-set-in-zombieland-universe
An Opera Nonprofit Bets on VR, With a New Show About Joan of Arc
In the new show, the audience will follow a modern-day version of the patron saint in the form of five homeless women. The audience will be able to follow different women when the Joans cross paths throughout the interactive, site-specific opera, according to Hiatt.
Opera on Tap has partnered with homeless shelters to allow women to tell their stories, and is compensating them for their contributions to the show’s narrative.
Hiatt plans to incorporate augmented reality smartglasses, similar to Google Glass, which are reportedly rolling out in the next year or so. “The idea is that an audience member can put them on and experience the opera though augmented reality,” she said. “We’re working on technology development and figuring out the approach we’ll use.”
“It’s about taking opera out of the concert hall and into places where people could experience it intimately,” Hiatt added.
They’re also sending “OperaCades,” ornate theaters on wheels built in partnership with New Orleans Opera, around to different cities so that music lovers can safely enjoy a live performance.
See the full story here: https://thestoryexchange.org/opera-on-tap-leveraging-virtual-reality-survive-pandemic/
‘Omni One’ Virtual Reality Treadmill Raises Over $11M From More Than 4,000 Investors
Virtuix, developer of Omni One, an omni-directional treadmill for the home that lets players walk and run inside popular games and virtual worlds, has announced that its campaign on SeedInvest, an equity crowdfunding platform, has surpassed $11M in funding from more than 4,000 investors, breaking records for the fastest uptake in the platform's history. Virtuix's campaign to back Omni One aims to raise $15M and ends Friday, April 2, 2021.
See the full story here; https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/omni-one-virtual-reality-treadmill-raises-over-11m-from-more-than-4-000-investors-301239194.html
National Security Commission on AI Pinpoints Chinese Threat
The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence identified China as the first to challenge U.S. technological dominance since the end of World War II. To counter this potential threat to the United States, the 15-member commission issued a 756-page report urging a $40 billion investment in artificial intelligence research and development to be “AI ready” by 2025. The report also called for the U.S. to stay two generations ahead of China in semiconductor manufacturing. To that end, it suggested a significant tax credit for chip makers.
VentureBeat reports that, “President Biden pledged support for $32 billion to address a global chip shortage and last week signed an executive order to investigate supply chain issues.”
To counter China’s “techno-authoritarian governance,” the report encouraged both the establishment of an Emerging Technology Coalition with allies and “high-level, ongoing diplomatic dialogue with China to discuss challenges emerging technology like AI presents in order to find areas for cooperation toward global challenges like climate change.”
See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/national-security-commission-on-ai-pinpoints-chinese-threat/#more-157764
Massachusetts Finds Compromise in Use of Facial Recognition
With the new law, police must get a judge’s permission to run a facial recognition search.
The New York Times reports that, even with a judge’s permission, “someone from the state police, the FBI or the Registry of Motor Vehicles [is required to] perform the search.” In other words, “a local officer can’t just download a facial recognition app and do a search.” The law goes further in creating “a commission to study facial recognition policies and make recommendations, such as whether a criminal defendant should be told that they were identified using the technology.”
The terms of the draft law banned “almost all” government agencies from using facial recognition except the Registry of Motor Vehicles, “which uses it to prevent identity theft.” Otherwise, any agency required a warrant to ask for a search. Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker threatened to veto it. A letter from NBA player Jaylen Brown and his Celtics teammates decried the technology’s built-in racial bias.
The new law is the result of compromise. Crockford noted that it was “politically impossible” to ban the use of facial recognition in the state … [but] that additional guidelines will help prevent abuse and false arrests.”
See the full story here: https://www.etcentric.org/massachusetts-finds-compromise-in-use-of-facial-recognition/
